Derry will be avenged only by the extension of the struggle against British imperialism in both the North and South of Ireland. And after this massacre it is clearer still that the mass struggle in the North cannot be fought and defended without arms. Yet of the many protests which Monday's Morning Star urges should 'flood Downing Street', few enough will help militants in Britain to draw the necessary conclusions from this. All shades of liberal and reformist opinion will today be protesting against the actions of the British Army - but at openly be pointing the finger to the IRA as the main enemy of 'peace' in Ulster.
The reaction of the British press to Sunday's killings throws into sharp relief the need to make support for the IRA a central task of the solidarity movement in Britain. Running through many of the reports is the idea that the main responsibility for the killings lies with the IRA. Imperialism's use of internment, the presence and high concentration of British troops, the terror tacties and the murder, are all justified as being regrettable aspects of a necessary campaign against what it dubs a cancer within the Northern Catholic community - the IRA.
A solidarity movement in Britain has to have as its main task the combatting of such mystifications. This can only be acheived by showing that at this period the struggle of the IRA is the legitimate continuation of the struggle of the Irish people for self-determination. For militants who take the side of the oppressed minority of N.Ireland against the Stormont regime, the N. Irish State, and therefore British imperialism, it is vital to solidarise with the IRA, the only force capable of giving an immediate perspective of struggle against an enemy which is determined to crush the resistance of the Irish people. A refusal to take up this position, in the present situation, means running the risk of falling into the arms of the British bourgeoisie, which is desperate only to smash the IRA before clinching a political deal with Lynch, Stormont, and the reformists in the N.Ireland opposition who are prepared to sell out on the national question and accept less blatant but equally exploitative forms of imperialist domination.
The Irish Solidarity Campaign has been fighting within the British left and in the movement against internment the same time they will more or less openly for a principled position of solidarity with the IRA. Founded fifteen months ago, and now organising around its paper, The Irish Citizen ISC is a unique organisation: neither an Irish organisation in Britain, nor an organisation of British people in solidarity with the Irish struggle, it is an attempt to combine both of these and make use of the links between the two to grease the slope of British imperialism's decline. The Irish workers in exile are crucial to the building of an effective solidarity campaign: but it is of great importance for them to have the support of British militants. The student left, and all the youth who recognise the existence of British imperialism, have been the first to begin to respond to this need. The third sector which must be grought into the struggle, is the organised British working class itself. However it is a fact of history that the British workers have rarely understood the necessity to make common cause with the nations oppressed by British imperialism. Their organisations have been dominated by the ideology of Fabianism and by a priviliged bureaucracy which considers that collaboration with the ruling class, and gradual reform within capitalism, is the proper route for British workers.
Yet the British working class will be: won to the support of the struggle in Ireland, which comes at a time of deep Daily :802 Mail crisis for imperialism, and at a time when the ruling class attack on British workers is leading to a questioning of social democracy among the militants.
The point, though, is that they will not be won through a campaign which capitulates to imperialist ideology on the Irish question because the left in Britain fails to support the most effective enemies of its own bourgeoisie. The argument that the campaign in the imperialist country should be based on the lowest common denominator of demands, is a betrayal not only of the Irish struggle, but ultimately of the struggle of the British imperialist ruling class in the world.
The main slogans adopted by the founding conference of the ISC were as follows:1) Self-determination for Ireland: which is the main principled slogan on which all ISC activity is based. Concretely this means that IS supports the struggle in Ireland at whatever stage it has reached and does not seek to make any demands on the Irish movement as a prerequisite for its solidarity. It makes its main target the domination of Ireland by British imperialism, and seeks to mobilise support for the right of the Irish people to decide their own destiny free from the political or economic domination of any foreign power. 2) Withdraw all British Troops Now: this slogan follows logically from the first. It is mainly by the presence of large numbersof British troops that British imperialism is able to prop up its rotten structure of repression in Ireland. ISC rejects the argument that the troops are preventing a bloodbath: any movement in Ireland and Britain which was strong enough to force the withdrawal of the troops would be strong enough to ensure the defence of the people. In any case this argument becomes more and more ludicrous in the face of the bloodbath resulting from the presence of the troops. The only principled position for a movement in Britain is the rejection of the right of the oppressor to send forces to maintain British rule in Ireland. ISC cannot and will noit countenance the presence of a single British soldier in Ireland.
3) Release all Irish Political Prisoners Now: to which must now be added the demand for the release of all internees, and the ending of internment. This is working class against the most experienced the most unifying and historic slogan, which again flows from the self-determination position. ISC rejects the right of British imperialism tohold a single Irish man or woman who has fought for Ireland, or is suspected of having fought. ISC demands their immediate and unconditional release, and pledges itself to work for the aid of them and their dependents.
4) Since August 1971 the individual branches of ISC, by mutual consent, and without waiting for the sanction of a national conference, have adopted the additional slogan:Victory to the IRA: this is the result of the new stage of the Irish struggle.It has been the military resistance of the Provisional and Official IRA which has underpinned the political resistance of the Six County minority, and has inspired the support of increasing numbers in the the struggle unfolded, it now supports the armed struggle against the British Army. British imperialism is involved in a war against the IRA and we are for the defeat of British imperialism, and the success of the IRA.
----- pull-quotes -----
26 counties. Again this slogan flows from the self-determination position: just as the IS successively supported those aspects which were central as